[harles]

How much energy do 1 billion people consume? I don’t think this is the criteria we should use.

[jonplackett]

Those people are still gonna exist though, right…. Right…?

[harles]

You mean in token form?

[HPsquared]

The people still consume (basically) the same amount of electricity though, regardless of their employment status.

Edit: though perhaps you're making the point that the AI energy usage is a drop in the bucket compared to its overall usefulness. I agree on that.

[harles]

It’s more that energy usage isn’t a useful metric - because trying to minimize it leads in entirely different direction (and pretty dark).

Ideally those 1b people would contribute value elsewhere in the world, leading to a big net gain rather than just displacement - and we’re hopefully getting bigger gains for the energy invested. Of course that’s ignoring likely concentration of value, etc.